Trace Vector will release on Steam August 19th, 2014 (hey, that’s today!) for Windows, Mac, and Linux! We’ve added a bunch of new features in the last couple of months to take advantage of the nifty Steam platform. Check out the changes below to get all the details on those! Also we put together a brand new trailer!

Trace Vector + Soundtrack Bundle!You can able to purchase Flexstyle’s amazing soundtrack from Steam as a bundle which includes both Trace Vector and the Soundtrack! If you already have Trace Vector you can add on the soundtrack as DLC or purchase it as a stand alone as well. Of course, you can also still get the soundtrack from Flexstyle himself!

Launch Deal!For the first week on Steam we will also be having a launch sale! So check it out now if you want in!

New stuff!
The initial launch on Steam will be the brand new 1.02 version. Here’s what’s new!

The biggest change is a completely re-balanced Endless Mode. In this mode an endless level continuously generates in front of your ship as you play. The level branches into either a safe path or a dead end. The goal is to simply avoid crashing into a dead end branch and to beat the distance high scores. This mode gets faster the further you’re able to go!

Changes to Endless Mode include:

Speed Ups now occur a little more spaced out and will speed your up just slightly slower. It turned out this change helped smooth out the jarring effect of suddenly accelerating and severely reduced the number of crashes that occurred right at a Speed Up.

Music changes now occur every other Speed Up so you can hear more of each section (it used to cut a bit short)

The slow down ability now regenerates faster and lasts longer. We found this change has helped prevent players from hitting a sudden wall in their score before they crash.

Tweaks and fixes:

A bug in the save data was causing some corruption in very rare circumstances. I’m not aware of anyone encountering this, but we fixed it anyway.

Pressing the Home and End keys now flip the camera around 180 degrees. Page Up and Page Down are still used for fine controls. This is mostly for fun, but one achievement does require you to complete a level upside down! So this will make the rotation faster

Added in a nice little interface tweaks and cleaned up some little things. For example, since CRT mode is a shader effect and can only be seen when glow is on it will automatically turn off if glow is also off.

Steam Features:

Just to be clear these features are part of Steam’s platform and so will only be available on Steam copies.

Excellent news! Trace Vector just got Greenlit on Steam thanks to over 7,000 of you who supported us with your upvotes! We’re charging our hyper drives and programming our navigational computers now. We’ll arrive as soon as possible! If you are entitled to a Steam key from our promotional on Groupees you will be receiving it as soon as we have them. Thanks!

We also have a new website in the works that will become our official product page. Other projects in the works are a new trailer and a free demo. The demo is going to have some unique content in it to tie together the ‘vertical slice’ of gameplay nicely.

While we were visiting Magfest a couple months ago (which was a blast by the way) we did an interview with Mark Carr from Indie Games Searchlight at Retroware. Since then Mark has played through Trace Vector and has compiled information from the interview into his new video review! His review is very in-depth and includes some neat background and insight into making Trace Vector as well. There might even be a little sneak at what’s to come. Plus, check out that sweet intro!

Can you not get enough of the incredible high energy, 80’s inspired, morphing soundtrack from our game Trace Vector? Well don’t worry, because Flexstyle has assembled a special arranged version of all the music from Trace Vector into a rocking soundtrack!

We didn’t just dump the game files into an album and call it a day. Instead, Flexstyle has taken the morphing layered music from the game and mixed them into 13 tracks (34:04) of remastered beats that are a pleasure to listen to! All the music from the game is in there with some subtle added flairs that will make you want to shoot laser beams from your eyes and do a light speed slingshot around Jupiter into deep space!